Sentinel Comics RPG Core Rulebook

Assign Dice to Traits
Assign one die to each trait so the environment can
get its own dice pool whenever it comes into play.
There’s no hard-set rule for assigning dice to traits.
You’re not required to balance a high die rating by
assigning a low one to another trait. You should
gauge it on how important a trait is for establishing
the environment’s impact on a scene.
You can consult the following table for guidelines,
but don’t feel constrained by it. Go with what feels
right for the type of environment you’re creating.
Die Size
Impact on Scene
Minimal
Average
Challenging
Dangerous
Catastrophic
Jennifer decides that Eldritch Storm’s Over Rook City’s
Horrific Distortion should be the most dangerous
element of the environment and assigns to it. She
assigns to the other two, giving her:
• Dimensional Rifts
• Horrific Distortions
• Malevolent Chaos
Don’t sweat die size too much: default to
and if nothing else strongly suggests itself.
Create Specific Twists & Threats
An environment usually has two or three different
minor twists and one major twist for each status zone
of the scene tracker. As the situation heats up, threats
and distractions from the environment get increasingly
harder to deal with. When creating your twists, you
want to create that sense of increasing doom.
To create environment twists, you tap into the
environment’s dice traits, imagine what annoying
and/or dangerous situation could happen, and scale
them to the severity of the situation (i.e., the color
of the scene tracker). It helps to imagine that, as the
situation progresses in a scene, the elements of the
environment are put under as much stress as the
heroes. Imagine your environment going through a
three-stage catastrophe: Stable (Green), Decaying
(Yellow), Collapse (Red). If you can picture the
catastrophic story of your environment as villains
and heroes battle in it, causing collateral damage
and chaos, you have a solid base to build your twists.
Jennifer envisions the three stages of Eldritch Storm
Over Rook City like this:
Green The Storm gathers, creating annoyances
and weirdness.
Yellow The Storm rages all around, twisting reality
before the heroes’ eyes.
Red Something dark and dangerous is emerging…
Mechanically speaking, most environment twists
resemble the abilities of heroes and villains. They
are game effects keyed off the dice you roll when
the environment takes its turn or when its twists
are invoked. In that sense, they add complications
to a scene based on the value of the environment’s
Min, Mid, and Max dice, or a combination of them.
And much like abilities, environment twists tend to
have a larger impact as the scene tracker progresses
from Green to Red.
The following is a list of typical effects you can
add to your twists:
• Perform a basic action
- Hinder one or more targets
- Boost one or more targets
- Attack one or more targets
- Defend one or more targets
- Overcome a challenge
• Add threats (allied, hostile, or neutral)
• Introduce a challenge
• Advance the scene tracker
• Trigger a doomsday device
• Action from a powerful entity
• A combination of 2 (or more) of the above
Before we break things down a bit further,
it’s important to note that many, if not most,
environment twists target one or more characters.
That doesn’t necessarily imply those targets need
to be heroes; some are far less discriminatory. The
nature of the environment and how you describe
the twist should help determine who gets affected.
Creating Environments
Intro
Playing
the Game
Creating
Heroes
Moderating
the Game
B ullpen
the
Adventure
Issues
The
Archives
Appendices
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